The core of the World Wide Web (WWW) comprises several billion interlinked web pages. Accessing information on almost any of these web pages would be essentially impossible without the aid of systems that enable a user to search for specific text, or textual identifiers. Indeed, such systems, generally known as “search engines,” have increased in popularity as the WWW has grown in size.
Traditionally, a search engine comprises an initial page providing the user with a mechanism for entering one or more words, characters, or phrases, known as the “search string” or the user's “query.” The search string represents the words, characters or phrases that the user wishes to find in one or more of the web pages that comprise the WWW. The search engine will then reference a database comprising the content of a myriad of web pages, seeking to identify one or more web pages that contain the search string that the user entered. More advanced search engines can also apply common linguistic permutations to the words or phrases that the user is searching for in an effort to provide a more complete result. Thus, if the user searched for the word “computers,” the search engine could also search for the singular form “computer,” or even the verb form “computing,” so as not to exclude, for example, a web page referencing a single “computer” but not multiple “computers.”
To generate a database which can be searched for the user's search string, search engines commonly employ automated processes known as “crawlers” to read information from a web page, follow one of the links in the web page to another web page, read information from that web page, and so forth until the crawler reaches a web page that comprises no links, in which case the crawler can return to a prior, linking, web page and proceed with a different link. In such a manner, the crawler traverses web pages of the WWW in an orderly manner, returning the information from the web page back to the search engine for storage. The search engine then stores the information in an optimized format to reduce the amount of storage space used, and to improve searching efficiency.
The search results that are generated by a search engine in response to a user's entry of a search string are generally presented to the user in the form of a series of links to the web page determined relevant to the user's query. Clicking on any of the links will enable the user to visit the web page identified by the search engine. However, to avoid requiring the user to click on each result, a search engine can also provide a short excerpt from the web page, illustrating to the user how the search string is used in the web page. A user can then obtain some context information without clicking on each result.